I had an exchange via YouTube this morning with someone who has grabbed a camera and is taking short videos of staff in their advice centre talking about the kinds of problems their clients present with. They’re then uploading them to YouTube to share with others. Bravo to them, I say!

I’m going to include their videos in the ilegal YouTube channel shortly to help drive a bit of traffic back to their own, so both of us benefit and their work gets wider exposure – cross-pollination is the way I like to think of it

I keep banging on about video to people and how useful it can be. Anyone who followed the LASPO debate will have probably seen at least one or two of the videos I took over the 18-months; my most amusing being laying and crawling around the floor in the Houses of Parliament filming individual speakers in one of the larger courtroom-type rooms, much to the consternation of many of the people present

Either way, once I had the videos edited and uploaded online, what it did was give people who weren’t there an opportunity to make their own mind up about what went on. It allowed them to form their own opinions on the believability (and passion) of the people speaking rather than having to trust to interpreting the content of any subsequent written report

We should keep in mind that YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google. That means that many people will search YouTube for information before looking anywhere else. Given this, I’d say it’s vital for organisations to have at least some presence on YouTube and, before pooh-pooing the idea, it’s actually not as difficult as you think!

Anyway, here’s a great example of using visual media with a sprinkle of humour to get a message across/tell a story (not forgetting the beats, of course!) – it’s got nothing to do with the advice sector but, it’s a Friday and everybody deserves to smile on at least one day of the working week. I’ll pick out some good examples of advice sector videos next time – promise